Deep-fried gadgets redefine 'conspicuous consumption'

19 hrs.

Devin Coldewey

How does?photographer Henry Hargreaves comment on society's overconsumption of gadgets? By dunking a few of?them in a deep fryer. His most recent series makes the iPad, GameBoy, and other popular (or once-popular) items look ready to eat?? and then, of course, toss in the garbage.

Don't worry, though: Unlike the devices destroyed?in Will It Blend, which also treats tech?as food, these gadgets aren't the real thing. Hargreaves photographed them and had their likenesses printed onto foam core mockups. iPads are expensive, for one thing, and if the shot doesn't turn out that's another few hundred down the drain. And Hargreaves says he and his friend,?food artist Caitlin Levin, were a little worried about what the lithium-ion batteries might do under the?extreme heat of a deep fat?fryer.

But the fact that the gadgets were fake didn't stop some people from decrying the shoot as wasteful. People blogged, tweeted and reposted with disapproval, failing to notice telltale signs that the devices were mockups: the keyboard on the MacBook is clearly printed on, and the headphone jack on the iPod is in the wrong place, among other things. Hargreaves compared it to people?seeing a car run over a cardboard cutout of a person and calling 911. That said, the fried headphones appear to be the real thing.

One last thing Hargreaves feared was the potential backlash from the likes of Apple and LaCie for abusing their products. But as it turns out, both companies enjoyed the shoot and even posted it on Twitter. Check out the rest of the series at the photographer's site.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

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